Holden’s Emma Hutchinson (20) grimmaces as Doyle’s Madison Duhon (34) goes up to block her shot in the first half of Doyle's 79-49 win over Holden Friday in the Livingston Parish Basketball Tournament in Holden.
Holden's Jaycee Hughes drives to the basket against Hammond during the Albany Tournament earlier this season.
HOLDEN – Holden senior basketball player Emma Hutchinson admits it – the record doesn’t look like a ‘typical’ Lady Rockets mark at this point in the season.
“If you would tell anybody about our season this year, they would probably be like, ‘No, you’re lying,’ but it’s happened,” Hutchinson said of No. 7 Holden, which hosts No. 10 Choudrant in the regional round of the playoffs at 6 p.m. Monday. “We haven’t had our whole team dressed out all year. Someone’s always been down, but we play for them. We wish they were out there with us.
“We just push through it, get over the adversity. It only makes us tougher, and at the end of the day, it’s just great to win when you know you’ve been through all that adversity.”
Holden's had its share of ups and downs this season on and off the court, starting at 5-4 before heading into the Livingston Parish Tournament, where after a 57-48 win over French Settlement, Holden dropped consecutive games to Doyle and Albany.
In the loss to Albany, Holden lost Camille Commish and Cambree Courtney to injuries, with Courtney missing approximately a month while recovering from a concussion. Commish hasn’t returned this season.
At the same time, senior Jaycee Hughes, the Class B Most Valuable Player last season, questioned her role on the team and even sat out in a 49-41 loss to Live Oak before Christmas.
“I think it’s really difficult sometimes being a leader, and sometimes you get confused on what you need to be focused on, and I think the main reason that I got through it was because I started focusing more on the people that I was playing with, not just the game,” Hughes said. “Whenever you’re focusing on X’s and O’s and not the attitude that you’re putting out there, then you’re not going to have anything if you don’t have heart behind it. I think that’s the biggest thing for me.”
Hughes said the support of her teammates helped her through the process.
“We’ve had a lot of frustrating times throughout this year, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything because I felt like it’s definitely made a difference in this time of the season,” she said. “All of girls supported me with all my decisions that I made, and they were going to support me no matter what I did, and I really love them, and I’m really glad that I decided to come back and finish out the year with them.”
In the game against Live Oak, Holden played without Courtney and Commish as well, and Hutchinson scored a career-high 24 points as the Lady Rockets began working in a half-court offense while slowing down the pace of the game.
“We always want to control the tempo, but normally it’s a faster tempo, but there for a little while, we had to slow it down a little bit and find our identity as the Lady Rocket basketball team,” Hutchinson said. “We had to find our identity back.”
The Live Oak loss started a six-game losing streak for Holden, the last of which was a 64-62 setback against Albany, which is in the Class 3A regionals, in double overtime. Holden coach Pam Forbes said that loss may have been a turning point of sorts for the team.
“The Albany game is always tell-tale sign that what you have is either working or not working, and traditionally, the loser of that game does the best in the playoffs if you look the last couple of years (at) the January loss,” Forbes said. “We lost, and we told the girls that. We expect for us to do well, and that it’s going to happen. We made a lot of big changes.”
A plus for Holden was the return of Courtney against Albany, but Madeline Richardson also missed time with a concussion, allowing other players to step into new roles on the team. Forbes pointed to Kacey Breithaupt, who moved into the starting lineup despite not playing before Christmas.
“She was the grittiest, and we told them after the Albany game, we can all do whatever, but we’ve got to play the grittiest kids because that’s what we’re good at – being gritty,” Forbes. “At Christmas, we played about 10-12 kids, and she was not one of the kids we played. She was a shot of B-12, I can tell you that.”
From there, Holden went 2-3 with losses to Amite, Iota and University High - three teams that have all advanced in the state playoffs - but the team remained focused on finishing the regular season with a flourish.
“I think the culture and the Holden kids we have, no matter what happened and no matter what we went through, they still believed that it could happen,” Forbes said. “Even the people of Holden, especially the last couple of weeks, they said ‘we know ya’ll are going to get it together. We’re just waiting for it to happen'. And we kept waiting … but I think people felt like it was going to happen because they know how resilient and just gritty our kids are. I just think that makes a difference.”
Forbes said her seniors, Hughes and Hutchinson, were key in keeping the team remain focused during the roller-coaster season, even before Holden boys basketball player Nathan Raymond was killed in a Feb. 16 auto accident.
“These two seniors have done an excellent job of handling (things) and being leaders through adversity, because bad things are going to happen in every situation, and you’ve got to have kids, especially the leaders of the team, that are willing to step up and do what has to be done – do the dirty jobs, say and stand up for things that maybe other people don’t agree with, so that (it’s) the best for the team,” Forbes said.
Holden finished the season with four straight wins, including over Class C powerhouse Plainview and John F. Kennedy Lake Area, to close out the regular season before entering the playoffs as the No. 7 seed in Class B.
“When we got to seven, we made a really big deal about it, and we made a big deal about them – their toughness, their determination,” Forbes said. “Most kids would have given up when we were going through those losing streaks, they didn’t, and hopefully they’re going to reap the benefits in the next week or so.”
That’s exactly what Hughes and her teammates have in mind – not only for this season – but for the future.
“As far as us as a team, I felt like because we’ve had to go through so much together," Hughes said. "It’s definitely made us a lot stronger, and we’ve definitely had to come a lot closer because once we started playing together and once we started hanging out, once we started getting to know each other, that’s whenever everything started clicking a couple of weeks ago. I’m just really proud. I wouldn’t want it any other way. I feel like I’ve really gotten close to those younger girls, and I really hope that I can be a good mentor for them because they mean so much to me.”
“Honestly, I feel like we can go a lot farther than everybody expects just because nobody expects much because of the way that the first half of our season looked," Hughes said. "But we have a lot more to us than what we’ve shown this year, so I think if we do everything right and we come out with a good attitude, I think we can do a lot more than what people are expecting.”
